Constructing the interface had been... simple on one level, but ridiculously complex on another. Like so much in life, everything relied on the connections a person had available to them. And the fact that rewiring yourself was extremely difficult and took time.
Splitting "himself" back apart was simple, but deciding which parts needed to be connected was incredibly difficult. Weirdly, the thing that helped the most with that was the Living Jade Empire's celestial assistant. Not its code, but the little advisor itself.
The questions it asked were relatively simple, but they also outlined the difference between what the self that had watched over himself, and a completely separate system could see.
Jade wondered if the Emperor could access the assistants directly, every time the little dragon offered up some seemingly unrelated bit of advice that helped him straighten something important out, before he had even completely defined the problem.
--
Eric gazed down at his phone with a familiar sinking feeling. Disappointment. The idea had sounded so good.
When Jade had told him about the ongoing 'quests' he had followed throughout his life, it had sounded really cool. Actually having your device trying to remind you that you'd need to use a toilet soon... was not cool. It was also not very effective.
A normal human body had inbuilt signals for when it was ready to expel wastes, and trying to expel wastes too early, or too late, seemed to interfere with and disrupt those processes. Eric was rather proud of belonging to one of the most adaptable species on the planet, and knew that he probably could train his own body to function on the app's schedule, but he didn't want to.
His other 'quests' for the afternoon were nearly as off-putting as the one he was currently hovering over the dismiss option on. Seeing his weekend shopping list waiting seemed more like a scold than an assist. Tapping the dismissal felt like he was losing something, even if the points he would have gained by completing the task were meaningless.
He needed to tell Jade that he desperately needed to produce something for them to spend their reward points on. Despite his instinctive reluctance to let points he might have earned go, he knew that it wouldn't take long before he had so many points stored up that he wouldn't care anymore.
The only thing he really liked about the app so far was how well it understood what he told it. It dropped all of the spacer word noises that he habitually used, without comment or question when writing things down for him, and always wrote the correct word down even if it had a frequently used homonym. He kind of wanted to ask it to write his assignments out for him.
--
Harmony didn't want to admit that she was thankful for the bodily function reminder, but she was secretly a little thankful.
Maybe it wouldn't be too much longer until people figured out how to maintain the eternal youth humanity had been dreaming of for as long as they had been able to pass stories down to each other, but they hadn't achieved it yet. Her nervous system was in great shape for her age, and she maintained it as well as she could, though she'd been slacking a little lately, spending too much time laying around playing games instead of moving her body.
The little reminder of the 'functional quest' that popped up was helpful. The fact that she didn't lose anything by ignoring one of the program's suggestions made the reminders feel more casual.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
She needed to ask Jade to give it a fully verbal interface though. The program could understand her just fine, and even converse with her at her request, but all of its notifications were using her standard phone notifications, simple sounds or text pop ups. She didn't like having to stop and pull out a device to see what it wanted to bring to her attention every now and then.
Harmony laughed and acknowledged to herself that she actually wanted this program to act more like a person. To just say what was on its little mind. She flicked the little phone in her hands into the air so that it spun, and caught it with ease on its way down, as though it were a tiny hoverboard.
The device didn't respond to the acrobatics she put it through, despite the fact that it had sensors that could relay the experience to it. Jade's little app might be connected to Jade, but it wasn't aware in the way that he was aware.
She couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not.
--
Danika argued seriously with her assistant app for the first time in years. "I need to share all of my information with the new app if I'm going to see how well it can manage the information!"
"It is obviously designed to steal your personal information! It is even requesting administrative access!" her celestial assistant argued vehemently.
"Just like you have?" Danika asked wryly.
Jade's new program stayed quiet, unlike the clone of her assistant that he had once used to communicate with her. Nearly two decades later, the memory of the two assistants arguing felt nostalgic, but she still didn't really want to experience that again.
"I am an officially licensed product of the corporation that employs you, and I only have the limited accesses that you have granted me individually!" her assistant argued.
"So... you're jealous that you don't have full administrative access anymore?" Danika teased.
She could picture the little dragon's arms crossing, and the steam that would huff from its mouth as it replied if she had been connected to a VR interface, as it objected, "I don't need it! And neither should this application!"
"It's new. It doesn't know what it needs yet, so it asked for access to everything," Danika explained.
"It is an uncivilized, illicit, and piratic application. You should uninstall it immediately," her celestial assistant declared vehemently.
Danika almost ignored its advice, before realizing that this was feedback Jade might really need on his little application. If it actually required the full administrative access it requested, he needed to give explicit reasons for it, and it should be able to perform most of its functions if denied.
She didn't find it odd at all when her celestial assistant huffed in relief as she uninstalled Jade's application.
--
Jade was confused by the feedback from each of his application user test subjects. He told his mother about it when they met up in Living Jade Empire, despite the fact that she was another one of his 'users'.
It was easy to return to the Empire now that there were permanent portals, but took a bit longer to travel to the coastal region where Kit was just climbing out of the sea.
His mother turned to wave farewell to the dolphins she had been playing with, even as she listened to him describe how each person seemed to like what the others hated, and that the devices didn't seem to contain enough information on each of them even with full access to their accounts.
"I think you need to start simpler then. There must be a few things that all of us used? Like the calendar reminders?" Kit suggested.
"There really isn't," Jade informed her glumly. "The only thing that each of you seemed to like was that it could understand what you were saying."
"I suppose not even you would have the capacity to create a completely customized application for each person," Kit sympathized. "But that sounds like a very useful skill for the project?"
It wasn't even a surprise for Jade to see an incarnation of the Traveling Merchant waiting, as they walked over the sandy bank that separated the beach from the little town above it. His mother looked both surprised and delighted as she hurried forward, despite the fact that the NPC interacted with nearly every player every day.
Jade's 'eyes' were still recording the scene in front of him, but the rest of him was busy. A small orphaned connection in his 'core' system was 'dusted off' and clicked into a new place, opening up a million different possibilities to the system he was trying to create.